Saturday, December 30, 2006

Taiwan earthquake and Internet & phone disruption in Asia

Asia 's Internet and international phones (including stock trading) in several countries have been affected since December 28 after a 5.5 Rictor scale earthquakes in Taiwan dirupted underseas cables. Thailand 's Internet went slow from that day. Expected to continue for at least 2-3 more weeks. I could not access some websites. Some Thai companies which use foreign servers could learn a big lessen when their websites could not be accessed (either by the webmaster, editors, or the customers) in Thailand.

Also this is a big reminder for government officials who are planners, and CAT Telecom people, and their clients (mainly ISPs). I understand that all the Internet gateway for Thailand must pass through the monopolic CAT gateways. This has created not only a severe botttle neck but also created an articially high cost for Internet communications for Thailand. Customers have been complaining and this is another complain.

I can also forsee a future problem that if a diaster, say a super storm hit Bangkok and then all the gateways in central Thailand are knocked out. Thailand 's communications would be paralysed. They have not taken advantaged of the distributed network structure of the Internet protocol to decentralize the country 's networks enough.

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